“If
we mothers agree that things aren’t the way we’d like
them to be,
we owe it to our kids to make a change”

–
Enola Aird, Director of The Motherhood Project,
as quoted in The Ladies’ Home Journal, May 2003

“For
many generations it has been believed that woman’s place is
within the walls of her own home, and it is indeed impossible to
imagine the time when her duty there shall be ended or to forecast
any social change which shall release her from that paramount obligation…
if woman would keep on with her old business of caring for her house
and rearing her children, she will have to have some conscience
in regard to public affairs lying outside of her immediate household.
The individual conscience and devotion are no longer effective.”

Eighty-six years after Jane Addams implored
American mothers to apply their maternal sensitivity to the ballot
box, her reflections on the perpetuity of women’s
“paramount obligation” to home and family may be viewed
as either archaic or disturbingly prophetic. Perhaps Addams could not foresee
the churning of social forces in the latter half of the 20th century
that led to such a dramatic shift in attitudes about women’s
right to equality in both private and public life. However, when
it comes to women’s primacy in the matter of care work, Addams
was dead on -- we’ve yet to witness a meaningful transformation
of our cultural understanding about who, precisely, owns the “duty”
of attending to the health and well-being of the nation’s
children and families. Today, as in Addams’s day, we rely
on mothers -- above all others -- to perform this indispensable
social function.

The asymmetry of who
is held responsible for care in our society -- and the various
consequences that flow from that imbalance -- are compelling factors
in mothers’ latest quest for social change. Beyond that, the
philosophy that drives the contemporary mothers movement is the
product of a cultural climate that mingles the heady ambitions of
the women’s rights agenda with a popular idealization of motherhood
and family life that harks back to Jane Addams’s time. This
situation will inevitably lead to friction as movement organizers
work to build a broad coalition of supporters. One of the biggest
ideological hurdles ahead for the mothers movement can be summed
up by a single question: If we adhere to the notion that mothers
make their most critical contribution to society by putting the
needs of children and family before the fulfillment of their individual
interests, is it moral for mothers to demand social justice on their
own behalf?

1.
Jane Addams was at the forefront of a Progressive Era (1890 –
1920) social movement to improve the health, education and welfare
of American children -- a chapter of women-led activism historians
have described as the "maternalist" movement. Under the banner of “social
housekeeping”, professional reformers -- including Addams,
Florence
Kelley and Julia
Lathrop -- inspired millions of middle-class wives and mothers
to concentrate their civic energies on lobbying for a cleaner, safer,
more humane world.

Addams and her colleagues
were intent on propagating a new political meaning for motherhood
based on cultural ideology that championed the emotional and social
value of women’s attachment to children and family. As men’s
public interactions became increasingly defined by the impersonal
conditions of market competition and waged work, women were venerated
for safeguarding the moral outposts of charity, compassion and care.
The maternalist reform ethic emanated from the popular notion that
women -- and most particularly mothers -- were uniquely qualified
to set their hands and hearts to righting the wrongs of an uncaring
society. To maternalist activists, the gateway to women’s
political empowerment lay not in breaching the status quo of male
dominance, but in engaging women’s sentimental fervor over
the innocence and vulnerability of children.

Rapid industrialization
and urbanization during the second half of the 19th century generated
a host of social ills that captured the attention of maternalist
reformers, including urban poverty, the unchecked spread of communicable
disease, exploitation of child labor, and high rates of infant mortality.
By organizing through a nation-wide network of voluntary groups
and social clubs, maternalist reformers coordinated a number of
successful campaigns for policy reform which included state-funded pensions for
abandoned and destitute mothers, reduced work hours for women, improved
health and safety conditions for women workers, the establishment
of a separate juvenile justice system, pure food and drug regulations,
laws restricting child labor, compulsory school attendance, public
kindergartens and the institution of a nationwide program to reduce
infant mortality and promote child health.

Women’s individual
and legal rights were not a high priority for the rank and file
of the maternalist reform movement (which included members of the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the General Federation
of Women’s Clubs, the National Congress of Mothers, and the
National Consumer’s League, among others), and reform leaders
initially encountered resistance to their commitment to supporting
women’s suffrage as part of the maternalist agenda. Maternalism
-- as practiced by early 20th century reformers -- was not a fundamentally
egalitarian philosophy. Its power to mobilize millions of homemakers
was based on spinning the cultural zeitgeist about women’s
responsibility for preserving the sanctity of the home into a greater and
more glorious cause.

Feminist historians have
argued that public policies and social services derived from the
maternalist reform ethic operated to institutionalize white, middle-class
standards of family life, which directly disadvantaged mothers from
working-class families and those of color. For example, records
indicate that the distribution of mother’s pensions (the precursor
of Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and decisions to remove
minor children from “unfit” homes were strongly biased
against families of color, and that mothers in impoverished families
were frequently excoriated by social service workers for seeking
paid employment outside the home. (2)

In codifying cultural
attitudes restricting women’s social agency to matters
of hearth and home, maternalist activities ultimately reinforced
the secondary political and economic status of all women. The maternalist
ethic also prescribed culturally and economically appropriate behavior
for fathers -- men were expected to go forth and earn a sufficient
wage to support their dependent families. Key social programs in
the U.S. -- which are still predominantly designed to protect the
economic security of the traditional breadwinner/homemaker household
-- can be viewed as a product of trickle-down from the maternalist
mentality of the early 20th century.

By 1920, nationally-coordinated
maternalist activism had experienced a significant decline. However,
influential women continued to support a social reform agenda shaped
by maternalist thinking, most notably Eleanor
Roosevelt and Frances
Perkins, who during her tenure as FDR’s Secretary of Labor
drafted both the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards
Act.(3)